“Ángel Casto, a subaltern in the Spanish Army, had been transferred to military duty from Spain to Cuba following the 1895 revolution. He hated the Americans for preventing his army from defeating the rebels; this hostility burned throughout his long life. No doubt he vented it in front of his son Fidel, born in 1926.”

Our turbulent relations with Iran date back at least to 1953 when the CIA under Eisenhower’s direction engineered the overthrow of democratically elected leader Mohammad Mosaddegh and the return to power of the Shah. The Iranian people have still not forgiven us for that.

Flag of the National Fascist Party of Italy. Fascism utilized the fasces as its political symbol. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Wherever and whenever there is economic distress, you can expect fascism to rear its ugly head. The Great Depression led to the rise of fascism is Spain, Italy and Germany and led ultimately to WW2. The prolonged economic distress of the Great Recession has led to the rebirth of fascism in Greece. By prolonging the Great Recession to defeat President Obama and regain power, the GOP are contributing to the rise of fascism in Greece. The GOP state that we are in danger of following Greece into economic disaster, and they are doing everything in their power to make it happen.

When the Castro brothers are gone from Cuba, will Cuba throw off communism and embrace capitalism? And if they do, will they at some future date want to become an US state? After all, the US and Cuba have a relationship going back to 1898 when we liberated Cuba from Spain. In the following years we ruled Cuba on and off for many years as Cuba is the country in the world that the US has invaded more often than any other. Cuba has embraced our national sport, baseball, and Cuban drivers drive American cars. Just think about the market there for new American cars once the embargo is lifted. The Cuban community in South Florida would love to see Cuba more closely connected to the US. There is one possible problem to overcome; what shall we do with the prison at Guantanamo?

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The red “GOP” logo used by the party for its website (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

What do debt, as in national debt, and deficits have in common, besides both beginning with the letters “DE?” I think that many Americans are confused about the difference and the media and the GOP are doing nothing to clarify the difference. If the Federal government spends more than it takes in in revenue, the difference is a deficit and that adds to the national debt, which we owe mostly to ourselves. The only way to reduce the national debt is to take in more revenue than we spend as a nation, run a surplus in other words.

The best way to reduce deficits and thereby reduce the national debt is to stimulate the economy to produce more jobs and thereby more tax revenue. Austerity does not work, just ask the European nations who have tried it since the crash of 2007, England, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece. The nations of the Common Market, European Union, that embraced austerity as a solution did so at the urging of German bankers who wanted their loans repaid in full. Now Germany is finding that austerity by its customers reduces its ability to sell German products and that hurts Germany itself.

Here in the US, the GOP are selling austerity because some of the most conservative among them believe that it is morally the correct solution. In other words, don’t help the less fortunate among us because their misfortune is their own fault. They chose to be born to poor parents or they decided to be poor in New Orleans or they decided to live along the New Jersey shore and should have been better prepared for a hurricane. They are the true believers.

Those members of the GOP who are not true believers, but are more politically motivated, are selling austerity as a solution to the nation’s problems because it will only hurt the 99%, not themselves or the 1%. They believe that another 2 or 4 years of economic pain will cause American voters to turn to the GOP for relief. In other words, they expect voters to reward them for all the grief that they have caused or will continue to cause if we let them. And the corporate media are shirking their responsibility under the Constitution to inform the electorate. Shame on them.

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Sabadell is a city in Spain, 20 miles north of Barcelona. To see the joy the music is bringing to the listeners, I recommend clicking the full screen mode button in the lower right corner. If you look at the pavement within the white lines carefully, you see the jets and drains of a fountain that is probably only active in the summer. I saw the fountain in action when I examined the area on Google Earth.

On the 130th anniversary of the founding of Banco Sabadell we wanted to pay homage to our city by means of the campaign “Som Sabadell” (We are Sabadell) . This is the flashmob that we arranged as a final culmination with the participation of 100 people from the Vallès Symphony Orchestra, the Lieder, Amics de l’Òpera and Coral Belles Arts choirs.